As long as your making a list for midnight body parts, how about a streamlined personality? I understand they can be had very inexpensively - the New Age stuff in the 70's kind of glutted the market when poeple took to reinventing themselves more often than necessary.

Think of the adventures you'll have! The doors that will open and the Doerrs that will close!

MMario, I've been looking at that unusual craft thread. Have you ever knit or crocheted any internal organs? A pancreas or brain stem, perhaps? Or crocheted a large aubergine-colored liver or kidney? (The mother of a friend of mine used to do 3-D crochet, and I remember being fascinated by a "bowl of fruit" she rendered in thread.)

Actually, hunters and farmers find more bodies than dog walkers; hunters because they go into out of the way places and farmers because city killers think that anyplace outside the city is never visited. Also because hikers and other sorts like that go off alone, never saying where they are going, and die.

Generally, the really stupid ones come from either a decision made in one language, and then translated, or assuming they meant one thing when they wrote another from the rest of what they put down, such they've switched Northern and Southern hemisphere seasons, and following that mistake through.

Mom, I'll just sit here in the room with the ceiling fan and cool off a little. I dug in the garden until I'd filled the wheelbarrow once, but that included digging out a couple of stumps from shrubs I cut down four years ago. Took this long for them to rot.

I've been sorting through all of my Dad's murder mysteries, and tempting as some of them are, I really don't have time to read them, so I'm doing the next best thing and letting them go to other mystery readers via eBay. So far all but one batch appear to have gone to individuals who bought them for personal use. I read those jacket blurbs and see all sorts of premises for mysteries. But no one has (so far that I know of) created a dog-walking detective. Maybe someone like Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon who moves around a lot (she to new parks in most books) this one could have a mobil lifestyle that offers up new territory.

Great idea, but I think you ought to Think Big here and aim for the Times best-seller non-fiction. Full page add in the Review of Books.

"They are everywhere. You see them every day, in your neighborhood, in my neighborhood, all through the land. They are the backbone of law-enforcement, the finders of the dead, the discoverers of hidden crimes. They are the biggest lever the police have against the dark and shadowy forces of evil.

Was she off or just very very low? The door was locked, I couldn't get in.

Been doing some crime-busting this morning. During my morning dog walk I found a pile of mail from an apartment complex in the next town over. I called one number (in one bill) and the guy didn't know that any of his mail was missing. I told him I was turning it over to the county sheriff, (I called him thinking if he knew of an investigation I could call the correct law enforcement party and tell them I'd found some stuff they might be interested in). Must have seemed an odd wakeup call. Anyway, I wrote on that bill that I'd opened it, and left the rest and the sheriff came and got it. Sorted it on my stove top. No "time stamps" to give a date of mailing, but since the guy I spoke to hadn't checked his mail in a while, it could go back a couple of weeks further than the date it was stolen (if it came out of a mailbox). If it was opportunistically stolen from a mail truck, then it is all for one day. Mysteries mysteries! I remembered the street name and found the apartment complex it fits and left a message that I'd found stolen mail and turned it over to the sheriff and they should call for more information.

I hope the good samaritan role doesn't have too much complication to go with it. Will Uncle Sam be pissed off because I opened a bill not addressed to me? I hope not!

And this brings an interesting idea to mind: have you ever noticed how many stories in the newspaper of bodies found in the middle of nowhere, or bones found exposed, or discarded weapons, are always accompanied by the line "the bones [or whatever] were found by someone out walking a dog." It's like the single most useful "tool" to law enforcement, and it goes unacknowledged. All of we dog walkers who find the most bizarre stuff are there because we are 1) on daily walks that go unnoticed by the criminal class because we're not out there all day long and don't follow the same route every day or 2) we are interested at looking at some new unexplored or wild place. We walk where the walking is possible, and consequently we find off the beaten path things that humans discarded because it was also possible for THEM to walk into those areas to discard them.

We have been told to read winter and summer, hot and cold and yes and no interchangably, to mark correct answers wrong as it wasn't the correct answer they were looking for, and mark utter gibberish corrct.>

Just as an aside, Good Bunn, what the fuck are they doing? Is there a rationale for these whacky instructions?

I don not have an exciting live, I objecy most strongly to that unreasoned assumption of yours Stilly. I would have been posting endless doggeral to MOAB then, were it not for the fact I was stuck working 50 miles away.

50 miles of pointless traffic lights, and endless roadworks, with no workers, but 2/3rds of the road shut anyway. 50 miles of very full coach rides. 50 miles with the absurd marking guidlines that some supposedly clever people came up with.......

Oh yes, you know those statistics you see every now and again proclaiming that your countries teenagers are the 17th stupidest in the world this year? The tests for that are what I'm marking at the moment. Many of the kids as thick as two short planks, but the people who wrote the tests make them look like geniuses.

We have been told to read winter and summer, hot and cold and yes and no interchangably, to mark correct answers wrong as it wasn't the correct answer they were looking for, and mark utter gibberish corrct.

There are lies, damn lies, and now I'm involved in making the statistics. May moab have mercy on my soul.....

Friday night and mom is slipping a little. It's all of those MOABites who have exciting lives and forget mom, stuck at home. . . where are they when you need them? Good thing I am home practicing my procrastination skills this evening (instead of organizing those books).

27. Established 33 years ago partly as a joke--Brady was struggling to find a civic-celebration theme other towns hadn't already taken--this Saturday-of-Labor-Day weekend blowout maintains a great sense of humor about itself. To say nothing of producing pounds and pounds of lean, succulent, smoky kid goat that goes down rich, smooth, and easy; the overall level of the entries is unusually high for an open cook-off. (Meanwhile, most regions of America don't even know yet that you can eat goat …)

Oh, I see. Well, they are quite entertaining creatures, I find, although in the narrow confines of an ice-fishing hut a goat might feel a bit claustrophobic. If so, it would probably bleat almost continuously. If that wouldn't persuade a person to stop ice-fishing and take up a more reasonable hobby, I don't know what would!

1. It might be that the goat was feeling insecure as to whether its company was valued by the people it knows. If so, taking the goat along on the ice-fishing adventure will reassure it that it is indeed dear to your heart and that its company IS valued. This alone seems like a good enough reason to me.

2. It has always been my impression that only a fool would go ice-fishing. Why would said fool not also take a goat with him then? I can think of no reason why not.

3. The goat can keep you entertained in the long and lonely hourse in the ice-fishing hut.

4. You can keep the goat entertained likewise. If there's anything that breaks my heart, it's the thought of a bored goat.

I tell naught but the Truth. Sometimes I tell a Truth And A Half, or even Two or Three Truths all at once. But I communicate ONLY the Truth.

Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth, and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister. --Hermann Melville

...all through my life my facts have had a substratum of truth, and therefore they were not without value. Any person who is familiar with me knows how to strike my average, and therfore knows how to get at the jewel of any fact of mine and dig it out of its blue-clay matrix. My mother knew that art. When I was seven or eight ...a neighbor said to her, "Do you ever believe anything that that boy says?" My mother said, "He is a well spring of truth, but you can't bring up the whole well with one bucket. I know his average, therefore he never deceives me. I discount him thirty per cent for embroidery, and what is left is perfect and priceless truth, without a flaw in it anywhere." - Mark Twain's Autobiography

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. - Mark Twain: Following the Equator

Hey, Mom! I found two more big boxes of my Dad's old murder mysteries out in the garage yesterday. I thought I'd brought them all in. I organized them so I could sell them in lots by author on eBay and now I found more that should have gone in those first sets. Oh, well, the folks who won the first auctions may discover I have more and come back. Wish I'd gotten that last Simenon in with the rest, though, there's only one of his in this new batch.

If you're interested, here's a picture of my brother. It's been extensively retouched, because the original scares children and dogs, causes strong men to swoon in horror, and has been used to chase Chthulu out of town.

gosh golly, rapaire, Charlten Heston among others did it. Not sure where any of the tablets ended up.

some of the old guys cheated, though, I've heard and just pressed the words into wet clay and then let them dry. the 'Hamurabbi Hoax' I think it was referred to. The guy didn't even do a good job - he put "an eye for an ear" instead of "an eye for an eye" which was the original.

Geez, Rev, I thought that I left all that sh*t behind me when, at the age of two weeks, my mom took me to the Church and had me baptized. At least, that's what the Church said. Of course, I could have sinned after that, but being the sort of guy I am I didn't.

Actually, if going to Illinois to visit with my friends and family, see my brother in a VERY GOOD role (Willy Lohman, "Death") he did very well indeed, help my niece celebrate her graduation from college (BFA, Art) and in general catch up with family is repenting, shucks, I'll take it.

So, your friend Rapaire has returned and he has not changed. I have been following his posts and I find him to be the same unsaved, unshriven sinner he was before.

Well as they say, Hope springs eternally in the human breast, and I had hoped that he would See The Light and Be Saved. Perhaps, I thought, he will bring the others to the Light of Christ. But no, you all still wallow in sin and rottenness that not only puts a stink in the notrils of the Lord, but shines out with false light, like schools of rotting mackerel along a blasted shore.

Once more I call upon all of you to reject Satan and all his works and pomps! I call upon all of you, in the name of Jesus, to give over all of your evil sinful tricks and repent! Let your true light shine among men, so that when you are swallowed by the Leviathan, by the Beast of the Waters that swallowed Jonah and brought him to obey the Will of the Lord, you too will be among the saved when the coastlines of this Blessed Land are ravaged by volcanoes, destroyed by hurricanes, eaten away by tornados! Oh, come to the Bower that the Lord had prepared for you! Surrender your materialistic ways! Give what you have to the Lord to further his works! You will be rewarded Hereafter a thousand-, nay, a million- fold!

And I, the Reverend Jimmy Ray Humbrew, will pray for all of you, that you will find solace in the Bosom of Righteousness.

I'm aware of the William Shatner show. It has aired before, but people keep requesting reruns, I suppose because it's so great. Yeah, that must be it...

Well, goats. Goats, number one, are horny. Incredibly so. Billy goats, that is. They also are psychotically aggressive, they make awful noises, and they stink to high heaven. They're dreadful creatures. I spent quite a bit of time out west taking care of goats at one point in the late 70's, early 80's, and I know, believe me. Nanny goats are much nicer, and they only think about sex for maybe 2 or 3 days out of each month. If you are planning to go ice fishing with a goat, DON'T take a billy with you, take a nanny.

Pat Robertson warns that Bad Weather is coming to the USA May 18th, 2006

Televangelist, Pat Robertson, predicts that tsunami and terrible storms are coming to the United States this year. He has mentioned these on multiple occasions over the past two weeks on "The 700 Club" television show. He said the warnings came to him from God in a revelation in January while on his personal prayer retreat.

On one show Robertson said, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms."

Yesterday Robertson said more about the storms, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

I am thrilled by this news! Why? Because no televangelist since the dawn of recorded history has successfully predicted anything! Pat Robertson predicting dire weather virtually guarantees a hurricane-free year! Yippee!

Which subject? The goats, William Shatner, or me? I personally find the goats and me of the greatest interest, possibly in that order, but my intestes are actually more eclectic that that. Perhaps we might discuss The Missing Quarks?